If you are an aspiring candidate seeking the Independence Party
endorsement, Marsha will grant an interview. A committee of three,
Marsha Coopersmith, Marsha Coopersmith’s mother and Marsha
Coopersmith’s daughter will interview you.

The Conservative Party endorsements are equally predictable. Mary
Loeffler, Conservative Party Chair, is a Clarkstown Personnel
Assistant paid $122,520 plus benefits and pension. Edward Lettre,
another Conservative Party bigwig is Clarkstown’s Clerk of the Works
paid $138,356 plus benefits and pension.

Where is Shirley Lasker? Heroine of the Palisades Mall fight,
darling of Clarkstown liberals, has lost her voice. She is silent on
exploding local taxes, on political reform, on choice, on Iraq, on
health care. Shirley metamorphosed rapidly into a gang member. A
part-time $37,000 gig plus benefits and pension is a super-duper
incentive.

The Working Families Party endorsements are more complicated.
(Full disclosure: I am an enrollee, a monthly contributor, and
helped organize the party in 1998.)

Tom Stoner, chair of the county chapter is not on any political
payroll nor is he seeking a political gig. Regrettably, Tom ignores
the party’s Creed: " … … The only justification for the immense
struggle involved in founding a new party is to create a political
space that won’t exist otherwise. If a third party (Working Families
Party) can’t bring new ideas and proposals into the realm of
practical politics, it isn’t worth building". Painfully missing from
this ballot, or any other local ballot, are any " new ideas and
proposals". Voters are again victims of the same old, same old. Tom
is a go- along- to- get- along guy.

There has never been a more propitious time for new ideas. People
are fed up with the same old and are anxious for new and creative
thinking.

That awful smell has found it’s way into Ramapo. Here is that
ballot.

Ramapo folks just won’t take it any more. They are sick and tired of
having a town government controlled by a few Theocrats who order
obedient followers to voting booths. While they dominate only three
election districts out of Ramapo’s 90, those three account for
twenty percent of St. Lawrence’s total vote.

Ms.Coopersmith, Ms.Loeffler, Mr.Lettre and Stoner resent a
coalition of all sorts of folks with different political persuasions
united around the single purpose of taking back their town.

If they are successful it means the beginning of the end of the
power of the controllers of Row C or Row D or Row E. It will also,
hopefully, end the rapacious politics of Ramapo politicians like
Ilan Schoenberger.

Ilan Schoenberger, represents the 3 districts in which the
Theocrats dominate. Ilan has a secure livelihood, $33,000 as a
county legislator plus $90,000 as Ramapo finance director plus a
$55,000 town justice for Mrs. Schoenberger. On the side they do a
little private lawyering. Ms. Schoenberger, a daughter, is a $70,000
legal clerk for Judge Apotheker. A job given because daddy got the
Theocrats to provide 2500 primary votes for candidate Apotheker to
opponents zero .

Shady politics works hidden behind layers of local government
that busy working folks can’t possibly keep track of. And most
important: we don’t need five towns that cause us to pay $135
million in additional taxes to satisfy the life styles of the
Gromack’s, St. lawrence’s , Schoenberger’s, Coopersmith’s,
Loeffler’s and Lettre’s.